You get a cute little user interface to browse through your movies and shows with little posters and information. You also don’t have to use a flash drive and move stuff over if you want to watch from your PlayStation or other device. just a browser is enough.
In addition to the UI others have mentioned, I host mine behind a VPN so all my friends can use it over the Internet, too. It gets a decent amount of traffic every week.
I personally have one so that I don’t have to mess around with plugging in any hdmi cables and moving my laptop from where it’s docked, I can flick on the server and then it can just be accessed on any tv in the house by anyone.
Neat, navigable UI. Pulls posters, metadata, etc. Can generate “trickplay” images so you’ve thumbnails when scrolling the progress bar. You can sync playback across connected clients (I mostly use that feature for multi-room music playback). Restrictions by account and/or tags so the little ones don’t end up watching Ichi the Killer, Saló, your complete Cronenberg collection, or that library you created populated by a script routinely checking the e621 API for the latest animation uploads.
Runs in browser and on clients for Windows, Linux, Android, probably iOS too but homie don’t Apple. Took every bit of space but I even sideloaded it onto my old Samsung Tizen TV (wouldn’t actually recommend, little slow, build an HTPC or just nab an Nvidia Shield).
If you can get by without any/all of that, nothing wrong just browsing directories and playing media with your local player on a single device. In my case I’d need to set up overly complicated network shares and then configure every single device I want to have access. I’d need to change how I organize my libraries, then probably spend a little time writing an ansible playbook (that’d only really be worth it when adding new devices in the future) but… no thanks.
because it is convenient to access the movies from a smartphone or laptop from anywhere in the house without dealing with the headaches of windows file explorer shitting itself upon seeing a folder with 3000 files in it
What exactly is the point of a Jellyfin server? Wouldn’t it be easier to just like, open the files? Why would that require a server?
You get a cute little user interface to browse through your movies and shows with little posters and information. You also don’t have to use a flash drive and move stuff over if you want to watch from your PlayStation or other device. just a browser is enough.
In addition to the UI others have mentioned, I host mine behind a VPN so all my friends can use it over the Internet, too. It gets a decent amount of traffic every week.
If I can just add to what @glinncor@lemmy.world said:
I personally have one so that I don’t have to mess around with plugging in any hdmi cables and moving my laptop from where it’s docked, I can flick on the server and then it can just be accessed on any tv in the house by anyone.
Neat, navigable UI. Pulls posters, metadata, etc. Can generate “trickplay” images so you’ve thumbnails when scrolling the progress bar. You can sync playback across connected clients (I mostly use that feature for multi-room music playback). Restrictions by account and/or tags so the little ones don’t end up watching Ichi the Killer, Saló, your complete Cronenberg collection, or that library you created populated by a script routinely checking the e621 API for the latest animation uploads.
Runs in browser and on clients for Windows, Linux, Android, probably iOS too but homie don’t Apple. Took every bit of space but I even sideloaded it onto my old Samsung Tizen TV (wouldn’t actually recommend, little slow, build an HTPC or just nab an Nvidia Shield).
If you can get by without any/all of that, nothing wrong just browsing directories and playing media with your local player on a single device. In my case I’d need to set up overly complicated network shares and then configure every single device I want to have access. I’d need to change how I organize my libraries, then probably spend a little time writing an ansible playbook (that’d only really be worth it when adding new devices in the future) but… no thanks.
because it is convenient to access the movies from a smartphone or laptop from anywhere in the house without dealing with the headaches of windows file explorer shitting itself upon seeing a folder with 3000 files in it